The present invention relates to storage volume maintenance, and more specifically, this invention relates to more efficiently defragmenting a storage volume.
Currently, the defragmentation of a given a storage volume may require multiple passes of reads and writes over the volume. This multiple-pass logic moves tracks within the storage volume in an attempt to consolidate free space on the volume, and may also be used to consolidate extents within a data set.
The more full the storage volume is, the harder it is to defragment the volume. Additionally, it is typical to require more passes as the volume becomes increasingly full. In clustered, or other mirrored systems, these multiple pass defragmentation writes may be mirrored to remote sites, which results in an increase network traffic.